As seen in this morning’s FT. I’m a tad disappointed no-one from the media approached me for a subject matter expert comment on this. For instance, they forgot to mention mimetic resemblance, wherein a potentially dangerous thing (e.g. Quantitative Easing) pretends to be something harmless (i.e. charitable giving from a conjurer’s hat of magic money), like when the Canadian Freshwater Shark mimics a floating log in order to catch its favourite prey – lumberjacks. It’s a fishy business, government spin. Anyhow, my scanner isn’t working, so I took a photo of the article for posterity, and copied the content below (my italics added):

A secret Treasury memo leaked this morning reveals how the government intends to mask the enormity of our country’s crippling financial deficit, using classic subterfuge techniques commonly used by the military to disguise men and equipment.

The communiqué, issued from Chancellor Kevin Darling’s office, was addressed to Merkin King, governor of the Royal Bank of England.

It outlines steps – to be taken by spokespeople when issuing statements to the press about piscal policy – that are intended to obscure the size of the national debt, including:

• Dividing the deficit into sub-units, such as external and internal liability and short term and long term indebtedness, thus making the overall amount harder to perceive: this is similar to disruptive camouflage used by many animals to break up the contours and symmetry of their bodies or by soldiers to obscure the shapes of men, vehicles and aircraft.

• Blending the debt against a background context of world insolvency, similar to camouflage colours and patterns employed by soldiers’ combat uniforms to match the environment.

• Diverting scrutiny away from the issue by focussing attention on the United States’ even more embarrassing monetary problems, known as misdirection by camouflage experts.

• Mentioning the amount of borrowing quickly and indistinctly whilst simultaneously coughing into a hand and waving at an imaginary friend across the road: another form of misdirection.

Pass this article on to all those you know – it’s time we call the politicians’ bluff and show them that they can’t pull the wool over our eyes!

Following a pre-emptive announcement on Soldier Systems on Feb 17th, the US Army confirmed that it will be fielding Crye’s Multicam pattern in Afghanistan, replacing the maligned Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP) and effectively ending trials of a recoloured derivative, UCP-D, that attempted to resolve some of the concealment issues around UCP by adding a fourth, earth (‘Coyote’) brown colour.

The Army will begin fielding MultiCam, a more effective camouflage pattern for Afghanistan, in August. Soldiers deploying in late summer will be the first to receive the new versions of the Army Combat Uniform; soldiers already in theater will begin getting them in the fall.

MultiCam, made by Crye Precision LLC, bested the existing digital pattern and others in multiple Army tests.

MultiCam was “21 percent less detectable than UCP,” the pattern used in ACUs, said Col. Bill Cole, project manager for Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment.

“MultiCam was the clear winner,” he said.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey was convinced of MultiCam’s effectiveness based on that statistic, Cole said.

“He’s an infantryman … when he saw that, he said, ‘You mean I can get this much closer to the enemy before I’m seen?’” Cole said. “That’s what he wanted.”

Secretary of the Army John McHugh approved Casey’s recommendation Feb. 19.

The 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, at Fort Polk, La., and the Iowa National Guard’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, will be the first to receive MultiCam. The new uniforms will also feature other improvements slated to be incorporated in all future ACUs over time, including an improved collar and buttons to replace some Velcro.

“Anything they would wear on a dismounted combat patrol will be in MultiCam,” Cole said.

The Feb. 19 announcement came after a multiphase effort that culminated with soldiers from Fort Bragg, N.C., Fort Campbell, Ky., and Fort Drum, N.Y., evaluating hundreds of calibrated photos of the Army’s Universal Camouflage Pattern and five alternative patterns taken in different settings in Afghanistan.

Soldiers wearing Multicam

So is MultiCam a step backward, returning camo design to old-skool analogue patterns with swirly woodland shapes? Not at all! While it is not a pixellated pattern like UCP, the Marine’s MarPat, or Canada’s CadPat, it is still a digital designed pattern, and is far more advanced than any camo fielded in the 1980s and ’90s. Its design takes advantage of improvements in computer software that were unimaginable in the days of the Cold-war, allowing a complex pattern to be assembled from many different overlapping images, with colours tweaked to match environmental samples at the touch of a button. Before it was even printed, the concept was validated using sophisticated simulations of the pattern in different environments.

In the spirit of the recent trend toward an increase in the thought and development of uniforms for troops, including the design of features as well as camo patterns, Strike-Hold! has posted loads of great pictures in an article about 21st Century camo uniforms.